During GISEC 2024, Telecom Review conducted an exclusive interview with du’s Chief ICT Officer, Jasim Al Awadi, who discussed the significance of digital trust, collaboration and artificial intelligence within the cybersecurity landscape, along with the digital telco’s impact and commitment to enhancing the UAE’s cyber defense.
Your keynote emphasized the importance of digital trust for business success. Could you please elaborate on why digital trust is crucial and discuss du's commitment to this topic?
I think digital trust is a critical element for business success, and a lot of pillars are included to build it. Digital trust is about building the right policies, processes, tools, and skill sets. It's a journey that takes years; it doesn't come that quick.
At du, we have that capability when it comes to being tagged as a ‘digital trust partner,’ because throughout the course of our years of operation, since 2007 until today, we have built a lot of capabilities internally, through our manpower, talents, and the subsets of technologies that we utilize.
Today, we have millions and millions of fixed and mobile subscribers as well as enterprise clients throughout the nation and we are proudly protecting their networks (without being breached for all of these years).
This shows how capable we are, as an organization, when it comes to implementing processes, policies, and the latest technologies, and even uplifting the skill sets of our employees.
The ITU and UAE Cybersecurity Council have launched the Global CyberDrill, with the aim of bringing together players from around the world to foster global cooperation and partnership in mitigating cyber threats. As a founding partner, how will du enhance cybersecurity capacity and capabilities through regional collaborations and cooperation, improving the UAE’s cyber defense readiness?
First of all, I would like to thank all our partners, particularly the UAE Cybersecurity Council and ITU. Such collaboration in this space is extremely important. We are really excited to be founders and we are keen to invest in this area because protecting our clients and the nation in the cyberspace is our obligation as an organization.
I think it [Global CyberDrill] is really crucial in this space where collaboration is key, because when it comes to cybersecurity, it's all about sharing knowledge and different cases on what each attack looks like. It's not as straightforward as other technologies; that's why being part of these global events is really key for us and we are always keen to be founders in such initiatives in order for us to uplift our capabilities.
As the Chief ICT Officer, what is your opinion on the ongoing trend of AI-driven cyber resilience? How is du utilizing emerging technologies to strengthen and secure its digital footprint?
As you know, AI is a very hot topic that is penetrating each and every line of business, and security is one of them. From day one, we started looking into embedding AI to enhance our security portfolio.
One of the products that we are launching here at GISEC is SoC-in-a-Box. It is enabled with an AI feature that enhances a lot of functionalities when it comes to operating it on the ground, preventing manual intervention by our engineers at the backend.
Moving forward, embracing AI technologies in all lines of business is very crucial. And that's why du is implementing a very solid plan when it comes to AI integration across different product portfolios.
In a nutshell, what is du's impact on cybersecurity and the digital infrastructure across the region and beyond?
Our impact relies on how we protect our infrastructure and how good we are at protecting it. Throughout the course of the years, we made this experience seamless to our end users and there is a big team at the backend protecting them from all those threats. This [on its own] has a major impact.
They always say that the moment you have a crucial service, that is used seamlessly, it means you are doing great stuff, and we are really proud to be in that position as a company that is driving such capabilities across the nation.
Managing critical infrastructure is really important for us to level up the game. Critical infrastructure uplifts our capabilities and skill sets, while revamping our technologies to be capable of handling any threat when it comes to the cyberspace [niche] and protecting our clients.
On the other hand, when it comes to our security offerings in the market, I am really proud to say that we have the latest technology offerings when it comes to cybersecurity. Our product portfolio is enriched with products that are enabling all clients to choose from different flavors and decide what they want. This shows how the UAE, by itself, is forefronting all kind of businesses—whether it is in the digital space or cyber space or real estate space, among others.
As I always say, we are blessed to be part of this country and its visionary leadership. And that's why you will always see us offering the latest and greatest when it comes to our product portfolios.
